專四晨讀美文：Nature

Nature
When we speak of nature in this manner,
we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind.
We mean the integrity of impression
made by manifold natural objects.
It is this which distinguishes
the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet.
The charming landscape which I saw this morning,
is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms.
Miller owns this field, Locke that,
and Manning the woodland beyond.
But none of them owns the landscape.
There is a property in the horizon which no man has
but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.
This is the best part of these men's farms,
yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title.
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature.
Most persons do not see the sun.
At least they have a very superficial seeing.
The sun illuminates only the eye of the man,
but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.
The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are
still truly adjusted to each other;
who has retained the spirit of infancy
even into the era of manhood.
His intercourse with heaven and earth,
becomes part of his daily food.
In the presence of nature,
a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.
Nature says, he is my creature,
and maugre all his impertinent griefs,
he shall be glad with me.
Not the sun or the summer alone,
but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight;
for every hour and change
corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind,
from breathless noon to grimmest midnight.
Nature is a setting that fits equally well
a comic or a mourning piece.
In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue.
Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles,
at twilight, under a clouded sky,
without having in my thoughts
any occurrence of special good fortune,
I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration.
I am glad to the brink of fear.
In the woods too, a man casts off his years,
as the snake his slough,
and at what period soever of life, is always a child.
In the woods, is perpetual youth.